What drives the polarisation and moderation of opinions? Evidence from a Finnish citizen deliberation experiment on immigration

In the study of deliberation, a largely under‐explored area is why some participants polarise their opinion after deliberation and why others moderate them. Opinion polarisation is usually considered a suspicious outcome of deliberation, while moderation is seen as a desirable one. This article takes issue with this view. Results from a Finnish deliberative experiment on immigration show that polarisers and moderators were not different in socioeconomic, cognitive or affective profiles. Moreover, both polarisation and moderation can entail deliberatively desired pathways: in the experiment, both polarisers and moderators learned during deliberation, levels of empathy were fairly high on both sides, and group pressures barely mattered. Finally, the low physical presence of immigrants in some discussion groups was associated with polarisation in the anti‐immigrant direction, bolstering longstanding claims regarding the importance of presence for democratic politics.     

Economics, ideology and vote: Southern Europe, 1985–2000

Abstract.  This article analyses the role of economics in voting behaviour in Greece, Portugal and Spain. First, it describes the objective economic conditions in these countries and investigates the degree to which they reflect the electorates' economic perceptions. Second, a multilevel model of voting behaviour for Greece, Portugal and Spain is tested to determine if, as expected, economics is more important than social and political cleavages. This approach allows one to assess the effects of both individual voters' economic perceptions and objective economic conditions to determine which are more important, and to compare their effects with social and political cleavages. With the exception of Greece, the economic voting model will also be tested under different political conditions (i.e., type of government in each country).     

How the coronavirus crisis affects citizen trust in institutions and in unknown others: Evidence from ‘the Swedish experiment’

We study how Swedish citizens updated their institutional and interpersonal trust as the corona crisis evolved from an initial phase to an acute phase in the spring of 2020. The study is based on a large web-survey panel with adult Swedes (n = 11,406) in which the same individuals were asked the same set of questions at two different time points during the coronavirus pandemic (t₀ and t₁). The sample was self-selected but diverse (a smaller subsample, n = 1,464, was pre-stratified to be representative of the Swedish population on key demographics). We find support for the view that the corona crisis led to higher levels of institutional and interpersonal trust. Moreover, reactions were largely homogeneous across those groups that could potentially relate distantly to government authorities.     

To the Short-Sighted Victor Belong the Spoils: Politics and Merit Adoption in Comparative Perspective

This article addresses a persistent puzzle in social science: Why do some rulers adopt merit systems, refusing to enjoy the spoils of their victories? Dominant explanations underscore the importance of interactions among core constituencies of voters, legislators, and executives in a democratic polity but cannot explain the adoption of merit in autocracies and are not corroborated empirically outside Anglo‐Saxon democracies. Based on insights from repeated game theory, this article proposes a simple theoretical explanation that focuses on the future discount rate of rulers—democratic or not—and their interactions with economic agents. An empirical test covering both cross‐country variations among 35 developing nations and within‐country differences among 39 Russian regions is undertaken to test the theory. Controlling for factors from prevailing theories, it is found that rulers' longtime horizons proved to be positively associated with the adoption of merit in both empirical settings tested.     

Portugal's semi-presidentialism (re)considered: An assessment of the president's role in the policy process, 1976–2006

This article analyses the policy-making role of Portugal's heads of state in the period 1976–2006. Not only is Portugal rarely studied in the English language comparative literature, but there is no consensus concerning the proper definition of the country's system of government, whether it is semi-presidential or parliamentary. This article presents new data on the Portuguese president's role in the following areas: cabinet appointment and dismissal; parliamentary dissolution; ministerial appointments; referral of legislative bills to judicial review; veto powers; and agenda-setting through going-public tactics. It is concluded that the president's role in the policy process has never been irrelevant. While the 1982 constitutional reform did eliminate the possibility of undisguised presidential government, presidents have continued to be important in policy making, particularly due to use of their veto and dissolution powers. Therefore, the article argues that Portugal has remained solidly semi-presidential.     

Fresh pipes with dirty water: How quality of government shapes the provision of public goods in democracies

A large strand of research holds that democracy with its broad representation and electoral accountability is beneficial for the provision of public goods. Yet, there is a large variation in how democracies perform, indicating that democratic institutions alone do not suffice for securing citizens’ wellbeing. Recent studies have stressed the equal importance of state capacity for public goods delivery. These studies, however, rarely investigate how the lack of state capacity mutes the effects of democratic institutions on public goods provision. This article addresses this gap by using a mixed methods design. First, the conditional effects of democracy and quality of government (QoG) are tested on the previously under-researched domain of the provision of clean water. The results show that democracy is associated with higher water quality only in countries where QoG is high. If QoG is low, more democracy is even related to lower water quality. The second stage of the analysis proceeds by examining how poor QoG disrupts the effects of democracy on public access to safe drinking water using interview data from a typical case of Moldova. The analysis illustrates that democracy has a number of positive effects and incentivises politicians to focus on the visible aspects of water provision, including the expansion of the water pipe network. However, low QoG hampers adoption and implementation of long-term policies necessary for securing an aspect of water provision that is harder to achieve – namely water quality. This leaves the fresh pipes with dirty water.     

Peasant,Patriot, Environmentalist: Sustainable Development Discourse in Havana

Private urban agricultural ventures, initially a spontaneous response to food shortages during the Special Period, soon became a state‐sponsored project, related to global notions of sustainability. This article explores the relationship between sustainability discourse and its local dimensions to reveal the role of sustainability in the reformulation of the Revolution. Urban gardeners engage with international discourses of sustainability and interact with the Cuban state's articulation of these discourses. While this process forces urban gardeners to adapt to the changing meanings of growing food, it also provides a different language through which gardeners define themselves, especially in the context of a changing relationship with the state.     

Looking for a Jurisdiction for Somali Pirates

One of the surprising things about the resurgence of piracy in the Gulf of Aden is that there is not yet a clear standard of conduct when suspected pirates are eventually caught. There are many cases in which pirates have been released by the military navies that arrested them and other cases of excessive use of force. This article addresses the possibility of providing a fair trial to suspected pirates, also on the ground of new developments in establishing dedicated courts in states of the region. Judging suspected pirates presents a variety of problems associated to evidence collection, availability of witnesses and national laws to be applied. In spite of these difficulties, Western powers, which have invested so much in patrolling the Indian Ocean with their navies, have so far been unexpectedly reluctant to provide fair trials.     

The early modern origins of contemporary European tax outcomes

What explains variation in tax outcomes between European states? Previous studies emphasise the role played by political institutions, but focus mostly on the input side of politics – how access to power and policy making is structured – and the institutions of relatively recent times. It is argued in this article that output‐side institutions related to the implementation of political decisions also matter and have deep institutional origins. As the classic literature has argued, the early modern period from 1450 to 1800 was formative for the development of fiscal capacity, but European states diverged in the stock of capacity they acquired. This article tests whether these differences still affect contemporary tax outcomes using a novel measure of fiscal capacity, based on the age, extent and quality of state‐administered cadastral records. The empirical analysis shows that, on average, countries with higher early modern fiscal capacity have higher tax revenue today, compared to countries with lower early modern fiscal capacity. This association is robust to different model specifications and alternative measurements. The findings have important policy implications as they indicate how deeply the current fiscal problems of the continent are entrenched, but also point to what needs to be prioritised within ongoing tax reforms.     

Cooperatives as Sustainable Livelihood Strategies in Rural Mexico

The sustainable livelihoods perspective and cooperative movement are rooted in frameworks that value social justice in the form of participatory democracy, distributional equity, and solidarity. Unlike studies of cooperatives that focus mainly on economic efficiency and productivity, we argue that this socio‐political dimension of the cooperative projects is crucial for understanding their potential as sustainable livelihoods. This exploratory research examines the experiences of two rural Mexican communities in Guanajuato and Oaxaca, which formed cooperatives as alternative livelihood strategies. Our results show that each community used similar grassroots political culture to develop cooperatives designed to meet local needs.